


Home (You + Me)

by spookyleo



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Character Study, M/M, Post-Canon, Travel, You Gave Me a Home trope
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-23
Updated: 2019-11-23
Packaged: 2021-02-25 22:01:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,939
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21532633
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spookyleo/pseuds/spookyleo
Summary: Now though, Arthur and Eames were able to build their own city, albeit with each home countries apart, but the travel was what made it feel real, and Arthur could no longer take that for granted.“It’s okay, love,” Eames had once told him when he woke up on the couch in their Diksmuide apartment with no memory of how he got there.“We got a train from Paris, remember?” Eames had pressed soft kisses into the skin on one of his hands as he said it, and Arthur had tried to slow his breathing enough to count in his head.“You fell asleep on the car ride over. Check your dice, love, I carried you in.”
Relationships: Arthur/Eames (Inception)
Comments: 12
Kudos: 67





	Home (You + Me)

_Hey! I made a **[Playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5ZecqcqWniqCystEQwN2bn)** for this fic if you're interested! Enjoy _

_\- Leo_

* * *

After the Inception job, it was no surprise to anyone that Arthur and Eames stayed together.

There had been a bet between Ariadne and Yusuf (that Dom had overlooked with humour glinting in his eye) about whether the two had lived together before. Ariadne used the point of them bickering like and old married couple, and Yusuf used the point that neither of them were the type to settle down, but in the end, they never really found out who was right.

And that was probably because neither of them were quite right.

Arthur knew about the city that the Cobbs had built in the deepest level of dreamshare, the possibilities of living anywhere they wanted to at any point. Mal had sat down with him before it happened, the last time he had seen her before she died, the wisdom of an old woman in her words. She had described every inch of their own private Eden in such great depth that it made Arthurs skin itch, desperate to explore. He had told her to write it, publish it as fiction, and she had just smiled knowingly. He often wished he had taken notes, because it was the last shred of his best friend he would’ve got.

Now though, Arthur and Eames were able to build their own city, albeit with each home countries apart, but the travel was what made it feel real, and Arthur could no longer take that for granted.

“It’s okay, love,” Eames had once told him when he woke up on the couch in their Diksmuide apartment with no memory of how he got there.

“We got a train from Paris, remember?” Eames had pressed soft kisses into the skin on one of his hands as he said it, and Arthur had tried to slow his breathing enough to count in his head.

“You fell asleep on the car ride over. Check your dice, love, I carried you in,”

Arthur rolled three sixes in a row, and started to count, letting his head fall against Eames’ shoulder where he cradled him, eyes away from the dice.

“I didn’t think. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, darling.”

Their Diksmuide apartment was small, modern, and full of boxes of photos, with a view of the flat expanses of Flanders, the Yser Tower, and not much else. It was most beautiful in the summer, with the late and blooming sunsets and yellow neon lights of the hotel next door contrasting the suntanned afternoons and lazy light brown mornings. Eames liked to visit in June, had a thing for going around the war museums, shaking his head and saying how it was awful business. He had been in the army as a young man, coaxed by propaganda, and now was in the habit of reminding himself to be angry about it once a year.

“If you had never been in the army, we’d never have met,” Arthur reminded him as they drank Stella Artois at a local pub one evening. Eames had swallowed, as if he had thought about that.

“That’s different, darling,” He had said. “We were destined to meet.”

They had met in Tokyo, so of course, they had a house there. It was in the centre of the city, and was loveliest in spring, when it rained and reminded Eames of the way Arthur’s hair used to stick to his face the second it got wet.

“Nobody ever told me to get rid of the bangs,” Arthur would say when it was brought up.

The house itself was on the large side, cosy but open plan, with the big rug Eames had brought from the room he used to keep in Mombasa as a visual centrepiece. They kept houseplants in big stone pots, an airy gym, and bookshelves filled with mostly contemporary fiction and nonfiction examining film. It was their best house for entertaining, but they didn’t entertain often.

“I always think about you when I see the blossom trees,” Arthur told Eames at dinner one night, watching him eat noodles with a fork, focusing on the black and white movie they were projecting onto one of the walls.

“Yeah?” Eames said. “How come?”

“The shades of them,” Arthur smiled. “When they heap on the ground, I want to scoop them up and bring them to you. You’re pink to me.”

Arthur hadn’t been sure what he’d meant, but it had ended in sex.

Although Eames’ family lived there, Arthur had rented rooms in Wales, in Prestatyn, a flat above a shop. Eames had worked with the guy who owned the shop – a touristy little antique-filled thing – and so he’d got mates rates for the rooms, and even if they didn’t stay there often, sometimes it was the only place either Arthur or Eames could think about.

It was Tudor-style, surrounded by red Merseyside brick and the smell of the ocean. Eames always thought it felt more like a hotel, a cramped little two room affair with water staining and some of the cheapest of their art collection, but the ugly, oranged birch cabinets made the place feel real, and it was grounding, and there was always first pickings from the abundance of books at the antique shop below.

Arthur quite liked it. He liked the sound of seagulls and the way mud and salt mixed together and smelt like the world was all consuming, larger than them, that they could get lost to it at any moment. He especially liked the way light filtered dimly in over their double bed with the scratchy wool blankets and the duvet cover - the pattern of which could only be described as reminiscent of wallpaper from the 1970s.

“It has the same kind of charm as you do,” Arthur smiled, walking along Prestatyn Bay with Eames one sunset.

Eames hadn’t been sure whether to take that as a compliment or not, but he had swung his hand in Arthur’s, muttered an aw.

“Thank you, darling,” Eames had said, missing the glint of humour in Arthur’s eye as they watched the sun fall behind the endless ocean.

That wasn’t the only place they had in Britain, either. The biggest, oldest and safest of all their homes was in the Lake District, a huge old manor house overlooking one of the lakes. it was classified as uninhabited, off the grid with its own gas and electricity generators. When they were in what Eames would refer to as ‘a spot of trouble’, they would end up at the manor house.

Not that it didn’t have merits other than that.

Eames had a habit of fucking Arthur senseless on their first night staying there, especially when they weren’t there ‘on business’ (aka, when something had gone tits up and they needed to hide).

“It’s nice to get away from it all, isn’t it?” Eames would murmur into the inside of Arthur’s thigh, and Arthur would hum agreement, mouth stretched open.

When they weren’t visiting ‘on business’, it was best in late summer, with the sunset calls of fledgling birds and when the tide of yearly tourists had died down. When the children of politicians and businessmen came to stay in the neighbouring manors, and they threw parties and balls that Eames and Arthur would attend and sometimes - depending on the host – get themselves kicked out of.

They would come home and dance around champagne drunk in their tuxedos, cook an oven pizza in direct contradiction to the grandeur of the home around them, listen to the best part of their vinyl collection on the antique record player in one of the living rooms.

And it would be good.

But Arthur got restless some days.

Eames could tell when these days were, even if Arthur couldn’t, because Arthur would sit in the drawing room, curled up in an armchair (Eames was overcome with how small Arthur was some days) listening to Joni Mitchell. He’d read, or gaze listlessly out of the window, and that’s when Eames knew Arthur wanted to leave.

Usually, when Arthur felt restless like that, there was only one place he could imagine himself, and it was the place they spent the most time – Paris.

“How about we go back to France some time soon?” Eames had said, leaning against the doorframe of the drawing room, one of the more recent times this had happened.

Arthur looked up from his book.

“Just because I’m listening to Joni Mitchell doesn’t mean I want to leave again, Eames. You can’t read into my behaviour like that.”

“Oh, but I can,” Eames grinned, walked into the room, knelt in front of the chair and watched a smile spread across Arthur’s face as Eames took the book out of his hands and looked at the title.

“The wild Mr. Arthur reads _Around the World in 80 Days_ ,” Eames had put on a voice to sound like that narrator guy off the wildlife programs – David Attenborough. “Whilst listening to _Carey_ by Joni Mitchell. Despite this, he assures his mate that he isn’t wanting to travel far away,” Arthur’s smile turned into a snort of laughter.

“Okay, you win,” Arthur grinned. “I want to go far, _far_ away.”

The last of their homes was a Paris townhouse that created only the best of their memories. It was sleek and old and beautiful, overlooking hundreds of others just like it, lined up in rows like children’s playthings. The house almost overflowed with books, stacked up on every available surface – they even blocked out one of the windows.

“When it’s me and you in Paris, I always feel most at home,” Arthur would tell Eames as they drank Italian press coffee and ate fresh Parisian pastries for breakfast. They sat together at the table on the balcony that overlooked the city, watched it come to life.

“I don’t know how I could’ve ever been to this city before without you,” he continued. “I don’t think it had any colour before I was here with you.”

Another time they milled around the kitchen, Arthur baking the cookies that his mom used to on her good days, Eames talking about a philosophical theory he was reading about last night after Arthur had fallen asleep. Pink Floyd played out of the radio next to an open window.

“I am sorry that I get restless so easily, Eames,” Arthur said when their discussion drew to a lull. “I think that I’d never travel at all if you didn’t want to.”

“That’s okay, love,” Eames smiled at the corners of his eyes. “Anywhere with you is where I want to be.”

“I worry that you’ll never feel like you have a home, some days.”

“You shouldn’t worry about things like that. I’d tell you if ever something were wrong.”

“Good.”

Later that night, after dinner on the balcony, watching the sun cast pink and orange light over the blue rooftops, after showering and teeth brushing and all the night time rituals, Eames and Arthur lay in bed. Arthur had a habit of lying with his head on Eames’ chest as they fell asleep, then spreading out over the mattress throughout the night until Eames almost fell off. Eames let it happen every night. Arthur was neat and tidy to a fault to the outside world, but when it was just them, Eames got to see the other, almost juxtaposing sides of Arthur, messy and neat and polite and explicit. And he loved him ever the more.

“You are my home, Arthur,” Eames whispered, as they fell asleep together once again.

**Author's Note:**

> Hey!  
> This is the first time I've written properly for this ship - or this fandom entirely. I hope I did them justice! They make me very happy.  
> Most of the locations are places I've been! You can tell because I've only ever been outside of England to go to Wales, Belgium or France. Diksmuide, btw, is a lovely little town.  
> I hope you enjoyed, and if you did, feel free to comment!  
> \- Leo


End file.
